There are a couple of deep, spring memories from Cache Valley. The first: I stand on the bridge over Spring Creek. The water is high, almost ready to creep over the road. It's swift, but glassy. Black stemmed willows arch over. They reflect, bend, break, bleed into blue sky in the creek below.
"On Top of the World" by the Carpenters plays in my head. I sing along. I am seven, maybe eight.
A pipe runs under the road, carrying Spring Creek from one side to the other. With the water so high, it is invisible. A large whirlpool twists and turns, bending light, torturing the reflected world, occasionally sucking down a passing twig into the unseen. I stand there and watch and sing.
I move on. The creek is so high the fields are under water. A vast shallow lake stretches east towards the Logan Mountains, great trees turned upside down in the reflection.
Everything is submerged except the lane, the house of the elderly couple we lease the ranch from, the milk barn, and the great concrete bull barn where our apartment is.
The next: I play with my race car set in the hay loft above the bulls. It is an enormous space with two bunkhouses. I keep my stuffed animals on a bed in one. Mice have moved into my mother tiger.
Out in the hay loft is my play area among a few scattered bales of hay: a Matchbox City carrying case, electronic car park, an electric crane, and race car set between mesas of hay.
There must be a radio too, for I've turned on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Why I listen to it up here, I don't know. We usually gather in the the living room around the new quadraphonic stereo.
I wish I hadn't. I have never pictured men without mouths before. My mind won't let it go no matter how many times I sing the Budweiser jingle--and here's to you, the king of beers is coming through--to make it go away.
I creep down the tight spiral staircase to the saddle room, very dark below.
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